Suck It Up

Okay I just got say to pretty much everyone I know, suck it up!  I don’t want to hear that anyone complain that they are tired, working too much, or especially that they are “getting too old for this.”

Today I had 76 year old patient who had just had triple bypass surgery and was starting the Cardiac Rehab program.  I asked him what his goals were for Cardiac Rehab.  I expected him to say the standard, increase my energy/stamina, get back to my needlework kind of thing, but no! He says he just wants to get clearance to go back to work.

It turns out that until his recent heart operation he was working not one, but two jobs: one full time in laundry services and another part-time lawn maintenance.  Really?  Lawn work, in Florida?!  I have to take issue with the person who hires a 76 year old man to do their yard for them.    I can only imagine this person sipping a nice iced latte in their climate controlled house, while their lawn man, a man who has been receiving AARP for twenty years, trims the hedges in the 100 degree summer sun.  There is lazy, and then there is just down right sadistic.

I am afraid I may no longer have the right to gripe about, well anything.  I just stepped into the 40s and I only work one, not especially labor intensive job. (And not even full time!)  While the hospital may not be the most glamorous place to work, it is air conditioned.  Nursing may not be the easiest work there is, but I do make enough money not to have to take a second job.

From now on, if someone pulls out their line? I will start another.  Code brown?  I will roll up my sleeves.  My patient is hitting the call buzzer like he is on Jeopardy and knows all the answers? Okay, then I will probably hide the damn thing, but I won’t complain.

After seeing someone pushing 80 happily working two jobs, grumbling will only make me look more like the cream puff that I am afraid I may really be.

Contributed by CristyAnne, RN